Royall Tyler to Mildred Barnes Bliss, February 8, 1926

Just a line to say that I’ve received the photograph, and am glad to have it, though it isn’t nearly as good a likeness of you as one I carry in my inward eye—just a line so that you shouldn’t imagine that I had already received it when I wrote the other day and had been so unmannerly as not to mention it.

I spent yesterday morning in the museum here, and thought for the hundredth time what a pity it is that you shouldn’t see the barbarian stuff here. Do please come, sometime while I’m still here. Now they’ve rearranged the early rooms, and the stuff really does make a superb show, and we’d have such fun stroking all the beasticles. Though there’s nothing to compare for sheer weight of gold with the Nagy St. Miklos treasure in Vienna,The Nagy St. Miklos (Nagyszentmiklós) treasure is a collection of twenty-three early medieval gold vessels, variously dated between the sixth and tenth centuries, found in 1799 in Nagyszentmiklós, Hungary, in the Habsburg Empire (modern Sânnicolau Mare, Romania). The treasure was transferred to the Imperial Collection (now Kunsthistorisches Museum), Vienna. the stuff here is much more varied and much more beautiful. My considered opinion now is that the Nagy St. Miklos stuff is not first rate as art.See also letter of May 10, 1928: “[The Nagy St. Miklos treasure] is not very good stuff artistically; I don't think it's digested—just motives borrowed and stuck on as on a ‘Gothic’ house in the rue Ampere. But of course it’s a marvellous document.” The Gothic princes’ hoard found at Szilágy SomlyóThe Szilágy Somlyó (Szilágysomlyó) treasure, consisting of an onyx fibula, ten pairs of fibulae decorated with gold and jewels, a swearing-in ring, and three gold bowls, was found in 1889 at what is now Şimleul Silvaniei, Romania. It is housed in the Hungarian National Museum, Budapest. An earlier discovery, in 1797, of a separate part of the buried Szilágy Somlyó treasure is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. (here) is immensely superior to it, and that’s only part of what I would have to show you.

Elisina is disporting herself on the Dalmatian coast. We here are preparing ourselves for the meeting of the CouncilThe League of Nations Council was the executive body that directed the assembly’s business. It began with four permanent members (Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan) and four non-permanent members that were elected by the assembly for a three-year term. that takes place at Geneva early in March.